Bengaluru: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has left out firebrand youth leader Tejasvi Surya out of its star campaigners list for the Lok Sabha election in Karnataka.
While a section of BJP leaders ThePrint spoke to contend that the party wants Surya to focus on Bengaluru South where he was renominated as party candidate, the fact is he was left out of the list of star campaigners in the last Assembly election, too.
The Congress has fielded Sowmya Reddy, a former legislator and daughter of Karnataka’s transport minister, Ramalinga Reddy in Bengaluru South.
“I have a constituency to focus on…I have to win this constituency and my focus is just that,” Surya told ThePrint.
Nevertheless, the omission for the second consecutive election has surprised many of his party colleagues, especially because heads of the BJP’s frontal organisations are usually deployed for nationwide campaigns.
Apart from being a first time-member of Parliament from Bengaluru South, Surya is the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha.
The BJYM head’s fiery speeches had caught the attention of the BJP’s central leadership in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress had taken a swipe at Surya, calling him ‘Nafrati Chintu’ after he was left out from the list of star campaigners ahead of the 2023 Karnataka polls.
In a high-stake election, the BJP is leaving nothing to chance and has kept most of its candidates confined to their respective constituencies, barring the exception of a few like Shobha Karandlaje and Pralhad Joshi, said a BJP functionary.
BJP sources also pointed out that Surya is considered close to BJP national general secretary (organisation) B.L. Santhosh whose arch-rival and former Karnataka chief minister B.S.Yediyurappa is calling the shots in Karnataka.
“The star campaigners’ list is prepared after careful consideration of several factors. Most of the time those leaders are included who have demand across the state or certain influence to mobilise caste,” another senior national BJP leader told ThePrint.
The list includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, BJP national president J.P.Nadda and several other national leaders. Yediyurappa, his son and state BJP president B.Y.Vijayendra, and Shobha Karandlaje also feature in it.
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Congress critic, fiery speeches
A staunch critic of the Congress, Surya has often targeted opposition leaders with barbs on dynasty, corruption and appeasement politics. Since becoming an MP in 2019, the 32-year-old has often hit national headlines with his controversial remarks and actions.
On March 17, a shopkeeper in Bengaluru’s Nagarathpete was assaulted by six men and the video of the same had gone viral. According to initial statements and the complaint filed a day later, the six men — two of whom were Hindu — had demanded that the 26-year-old shopkeeper stop playing music inside his store because it was time for ‘Azaan’.
Although there was only mention of ‘music’ in his formal complaint, Surya and his ilk came in support of the shopkeeper to claim that the shopkeeper was playing ‘Hanuman Chalisa’, fuelling protests in the locality. Later, he was booked for hate speech.
In February last year, Surya made headlines after he allegedly opened the emergency exit of an aircraft. The Centre had officially admitted that the BJP MP accidentally opened the emergency exit of an IndiGo plane at Chennai airport.
“It seems as though he has a lot of negative sentiments surrounding him,” Narendar Pani, political analyst and faculty at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) said.
These controversies and negative sentiments, coupled with the fact that he is contesting in a seat with a high population of Vokkaligas and Reddys, makes it a ‘tighter’ fight than expected, Pani said.
However, other analysts like Sandeep Shastri say making it to the list of star campaigners is more symbolism than anything else.
“I would not read too much into that. Star campaigners’ (list) is also a way of political accommodation of people who otherwise were not included. Maybe, they (BJP) wants Tejasvi Surya to focus on his constituency,” Shastri, a Bengaluru-based political analyst, told ThePrint.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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